


Changeling Child

by firefright



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fae, Changelings, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Magic, Supernatural Elements, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-19 19:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4758161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefright/pseuds/firefright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Never trust the fae, that was what Bruce had always taught his family. A simple lesson by all accounts, one that has kept him alive in his self-proclaimed crusade against the supernatural for years - and one that becomes so much harder to swallow once death teaches them the truth of who Jason is.</p><p>[A/N: this story is currently on hiatus]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Jason

He still remembered the words his father taught him.

His real father, not the man who shared his blood but the one who had given him a home and a hearth and the knowledge to protect himself. He remembered curling against the man's side before a roaring fire, looking down into a book filled with illustrations of beings both beautiful and horrifying while his new older brother sharpened their tools in the corner of the room. 

"Never trust the fae, Jason," His father's finger had traced the silvery script that adorned worn parchment. "That's the most important lesson you'll learn, never trust them no matter how good they seem." 

It had rankled him at that time, for reasons he had not understood. "But what if -"

"Never." Bruce's word was final, as always. "They are tricksters, Jason, they will only mean you harm in the end. Remember that."

He should have listened, he should have been the good dutiful son who walked with iron in one hand and fire in the other. If he had maybe he wouldn't have fallen, if he had maybe he would still be that Jason.

The Laughing One came for him on an autumn night, days before the more auspicious All Hallows Eve when their guard would have been higher. He was maddest, the cruellest, the most dangerous fae his father had ever faced, the only one who did not fear the bite of iron but embraced it. A true monster. One that Bruce had dedicated himself to destroying since he was a young man, long before his children ever came into the picture.

He had laughed as he caught Jason's iron sword in hand, laughed as the metal burned his deathly pale skin before he tore it away, throwing the weapon far beyond recovery. One by one he had broken Jason's bones, his breath washing over the boy with the stink of rotting meat until the agony overpowered all other sensation and all he wished for was relief.

The monster left him with the curse of fire and Jason clawed at the ground, wept as his skin started to blacken. He hoped and begged, believed his father would come for him and when he didn't he pressed his face to the ground, cried out in a wordless plea to anything listening to save him from this end.

Only the earth had heard him; opening under his wretched body and swallowing him down, down into the deep places where even faerie fire could not survive.

After he would wonder if this was how caterpillars felt in the chrysalis, in that void of time before they emerged as the butterfly with all the layers of their ugliness pulled away. Did they experience that same strange feeling of nothingness the way he did? Of drifting as his breathing stopped, as his skin and the flesh sloughed from his bones to melt, congeal and reform anew. Did time stop for them too?

There was a scream locked within his throat when he dug his way back up, dragging his body with a strength that was not his own. Stone and dirt pushed apart as easily as water and when finally his face was touched with sweet clean air he unleashed his raw misery into the world with the last cry of a child on the cusp of unwanted adulthood, calling for a parent who could not hear him.

The world had become snow and ice while he'd dwelt in the dark and Jason stumbled forwards, barely noting the cold as he moved on legs shaky as a newborn fawn's in the direction of home away from the city's glare. He didn't remember snow when he went down, or the way the branches of the tree's were bare even of the ghosts of leaves.

He did not consider what that might mean, too consumed with the desire to reach the one place he had always felt safe in.

The lights of the manor shone bright through the wintry darkness even from a distance, warm and sweetly beckoning as Jason climbed over the familiar gate and forged through the drifts that had covered the grounds. He did not need to see the path to follow it, his feet had walked it enough that he could have made the journey even were he blinded. All that mattered to him was that the door was there, right there in front of him and he stretched out his shaking hand to open it, choking on a sob of relief at the promise of warmth, family and safety that lay just ahead. 

He knew with a certainty born of years that everything would be well if only he could get through that door.

Cruel fate taught him otherwise. The iron door handle burned like hot coals when his fingers touched it and another scream tore its way out of his throat as Jason stumbled back, eyes and mouth aghast with horror at the sight of his hand blistering up red and raw. He collapsed backwards, shoving his hand into the nearest snow drift in desperate need for relief from the excruciating pain. It hurt, it hurt so badly as he pushed his hand deeper into the white.

"No, no no..." He whispered, mind blanking in the face of the impossible. It couldn't be true, there was no way it could be true.

Light fell upon him as the door was wrenched open and Jason forced his head back up, blinking stupidly in the sudden glare at the silhouetted figures who gazed down at him in stunned silence. "B-Bruce...?"

"Jason..."

_Never trust the fae._

"Don't..." he whispered, voice breaking with the terror of the revelation. His hands raised from the snow before him, one red and peeling, the other glowing dimly green and Jason saw his father reach for the iron blade he always kept on his person when he shouted, desperate in his denial. "Don't!" 

The ground beneath his feet cracked and shook when Jason fled, flitting back to the dark woods with supernatural speed and the echo of his name ringing in his ears. He ran until the muscles of his legs burned with exhaustion and he fell, tumbling among dark roots as the earth opened once more to welcome him home, drawing him down and down until all was blessed quiet darkness free from anyone who could hear his betrayed sobbing.

Time slipped away from him again as Jason hid, dreaming dark dreams until the day the hard frozen soil turned wet and warm around him. Until sun-kissed fingers reached to pull him free of his burrow out into the light of spring.

"Hush now, changeling child." Her voice was the crackle of contained fire, an inferno waiting to be unleashed. "Hush now, Jason Todd, second son of the hunter; my beloved. I have you now."

No words could pass his lips as he shivered in the warm circle of her arms, for she was a vision of terrible beauty with fiery eyes and bloody lips, like no fae he had ever laid eyes on before. He smelled the sulphur on her breath when she leaned in to kiss his forehead.

"There is nothing more you need to fear."


	2. Chapter 2

_Two years ago_

"It was Jason."

"We don't know that." Bruce spoke firmly, broad hands linked in front of him. He sat in the solitary armchair in the drawing room, while Dick had crowded in with Tim on the sofa and Alfred stood sentry in the doorway. 

The fire burning high in the hearth, once comforting against the chill December air, now felt oppressive. Dick could feel the air close and constrict in his throat as he pressed his argument, "I saw him, Bruce. You saw him."

"I saw something, Dick. Something that _looked_ like Jason." His father gazed into the flames and not at the children he'd brought into his home. Bruce's expression was pensive, as if his eyes were looking at something none of the rest of them could see. "You know as well as I do how they can disguise themselves."

Dick couldn't believe him. "Are you listening to yourself?" He stood up, ignoring Tim's uneasy gaze and grasping hand at the bottom of his shirt.

"Dick -"

"Are you really willing to take the chance of losing him again? We never found Jason's body!"

Only his sword. The metal had been cast into the roots of a tree, scorched and melted by some unknown power, but the bat emblem on the hilt had been intact enough for identification. It sat now in a glass case in Bruce's office, a twisted memento of his failure to protect his son.

"You think I don't remember that?!" The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degree's as Bruce raised his voice, also climbing to his feet. His height and breadth made the movement far more intimidating by default. "Think, Dick. That... person, at the door, it wasn't human. You can't have missed that."

Dick's gut twisted unpleasantly. He'd seen as Bruce had seen, his eyes too finely attuned to searching out inhuman details in human faces after years of hunting to miss the signs; the hair, the ears, the way his little brothers eyes had never been so _green_.

"He got past the wards, Bruce, and he ran from us. What fae would go to that much trouble just to flee? What fae would try the front door?!" Dick squeezed his hands into fists and took a step back, turning towards the door.

"Dick, where are you going?" 

"To find him!" He kept walking, out into the hall and towards the front door, ignoring the heavier tread of Bruce behind him. Dick took his coat off the rack and pulled it on, stilling as a hand landed on his shoulder. "You're not going to stop me, Bruce."

"You need to think about this, Dick. It could be a trap, running after him could be exactly what they want." He could hear the restrained growl in Bruce's voice, the tone of command he'd always jumped to as a boy, except that it wouldn't work this time.

He turned round and scowled at the bigger man, shaking his head. "I know... but I'm not going to take that chance. If it is Jason, I can't - _we_ can't lose him again, Bruce. So you can either come with me or back off, your choice."

For a long moment Dick thought Bruce would refuse, but then relief flooded him as he nodded, jaw clenched. "Fine. Wait a moment."

Dick rocked impatiently back and forth on the balls of his feet, feeling keenly that every passing second lessened their chances of catching up to Jason. He could dimly hear Bruce speaking to Alfred and Tim up the hall, but couldn't make out the individual words from the deep baritone of his voice through the walls, so while he waited he took the opportunity to do a quick inventory of the weapons he had stashed in the pockets of his coat.

Iron knives, smoke pellets and a grapple gun. He probably wouldn't need the latter outside, and the smoke pellets wouldn't work brilliantly in the snow, but it would have to do. Dick wasn't surprised when Bruce reappeared that he had his complete belt of tools with him, or that he'd left Tim behind with Alfred.

Tim was still new and raw to this business and, if Bruce was as wary of a trap as he made himself out to be, it made sense to leave his youngest brother behind. "Let's go."

Dick nodded and opened the door.

They were careful going down the front steps, as the stone had been cracked by the small quake that had followed Jason's mad dash away from the house. _Don't_ he'd said, Dick thought, as he lightly leapt down into the snow, sparing a quick glance upwards in case anymore roof tiles decided to fall. A few already lay shattered in the snow. "I don't think it was an attack. I think it was defence, something made him afraid of us."

"Did you see the way he was holding his hand?" Bruce turned his head to look back at the door. No, Dick realised, at the door handle. After his parents deaths, when Bruce had decided to take up his war against the creatures who played so callously with human lives, he'd made a number of modifications to the manor. Iron inlaid into the doors and their handles were just one of many hidden protections. 

"It burned him." He replied reluctantly.

"Yes. And if it was Jason he shouldn't have been harmed."

Dick turned away, thinning his lips. It was obvious what Bruce was trying to do, he wanted Dick to stop and think this through. He wanted to dissuade him by making him face the very facts that made Bruce doubt. Dick wasn't having any of it. "We need to hurry, his footprints are already almost covered."

He felt more than heard Bruce's restrained sigh behind him as he forged on ahead, following the shallow line of footsteps that had already been half-filled by the wind and falling snow. On some level Dick knew he was being a little crazy about this and he wished he could be as logical as Bruce was, but the gut feeling was there. Those eyes had been Jason's eyes, even if the colour of them was wrong. Dick couldn't rest until he knew for certain that his brother was dead as they'd assumed two months ago, or if he was somehow still alive and in danger.

Dick was almost certain Bruce felt the same way, even though he was being far more cautious about it than his eldest son was. He'd come out here with Dick, and he held onto that as some hope that Bruce didn't think he was barking completely up the wrong tree.

_Jason_ , he thought, as they pushed their way across the grounds to the woods that met the walls at one side, _where are you?_.

They searched for hours to no end. The snow had covered the tracks completely before they reached the tree line, and under the shadows of the branches there was no further evidence to be found of which direction his brother had ran. 

Jason, if it really had been him, had once more vanished without a trace.

 

*

 

_The Present_

"Are you ready?" Dick glanced at his baby brother, as he reached up to fix the mask across his face.

Tim looked back up at him when he spoke, and the tension he was carrying read loud and clear in his face. He was nervous and Dick couldn't blame him, this was the first big mission that Tim had undertaken without Bruce at his side. "Ready as I'll ever be." 

"Hey," He took a moment to touch the youngest member of their little hunting family on the shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "You're going to do just fine, Timmy. You got this."

He watched Tim let out a slow breath, before reaching up to fix his own mask in place. It was a dark bottle green, while Dick's was almost midnight blue. "Yeah, I know." Tim smiled bracingly, "I'm ready, really, let's go."

The masks were a matter of practicality, as Bruce had discovered early on in his career. When you were hunting creatures who looked near-human, or could make themselves look human, being found by an ordinary civilian standing over a body could lead to some unfortunate assumptions. At least after the incident where Bruce had saved Barbara Gordon a few years back they now had the Police Commissioner on their side, but it still didn't hurt to be careful and save everyone a headache where possible. 

Dick pushed open the door to the boarded up brownstone they had come to investigate and stepped inside.

"Homely." Tim commented, sniffing uneasily at the dry dusty air. The place was a mess, full of broken furniture and beer bottles, as well as cigarette stubs and a few used needles to accompany the graffiti on the wall. Teenagers or homeless people had made this their hangout at one point, but judging by the silence not anymore. 

Dick touched his finger to his lips to signal for quiet as they eased their way deeper into the house, and let the door shut softly behind them. Their footsteps echoed over the creaking floorboards.

Children had been vanishing from their beds in the surrounding area for the past few weeks, and the only evidence left behind had been silver coins stuffed under their pillows. The coins themselves had no known origin that the police had been able to trace, leading them to assume they were homemade and the work of a particularly twisted serial killer. Jim Gordon however had other ideas, and, as he often did now when a case had any relation to a myth or fairytale, he had called in Bruce to take a look at the evidence. It hadn't taken long for him to confirm that the one behind this, while twisted, certainly wasn't human.

"Tim," Dick whispered, as quiet as he could while still being heard. Inside the house was almost pitch black. "Light."

Tim nodded and held his hand out in front of him. Dick resisted the urge to smile at the look of intense concentration on his brothers face as he conjured the spell, simple as it was. Out of all of them Tim had the most inborn talent for magic and he took both his studies, and use of it, very seriously indeed. 

A softly glowing yellow light appeared above his brothers palm, then whizzed upwards to bob along next to his head as they continued moving through the lower floor, peering into every cobwebbed corner and crack in the walls for some sign of the children or the one who'd been taking them.

Tooth fairies, Dick reflected, of all the things. It should be laughable, except it very much was not, especially once they reached the bottom of the rotting stairs and Dick bent down, picking up a single lost baby tooth between his gloved fingers. He felt vaguely sick, knowing there would be many more where that came from.

When Tim saw what'd found he bit his lip, easing forward and holding out his hand in silent asking. With this one piece of evidence he might be able to perform a spell to find the rest.

Dick let him have it, swallowing back his regret as his brother minutely flinched at the tooth landing in his palm. Tim's hand was steady though when he closed his fingers over the tooth and closed his eyes, lips moving as he silently mouthed the words to conjure the magic. They couldn't afford to be easily shaken in their line of work.

It was with a vague sense of dread that he watched Tim point up the stairs. Of course.

They made their way up as quietly as they could, stopping and wincing at every creak and crack, before continuing upwards when nothing immediately flew out to attack them. Dick still drew out his escrima sticks once they reached the landing: while largely comprised of stronger steel, the weapons had bands of iron worked into them, more than enough to make any fae think twice about getting close. Tim had something similar in the form of a collapsible staff, as well as the use of combat spells.

He touched his hand to Tim's chest to hold him back as they stopped in front of what must be a bedroom. The door opened with a smooth click under Dick's touch and -

"Shit." He couldn't help whispering, hearing Tim gasp quietly behind him at the little piles of teeth arranged on the floor in concentric circles. Just teeth, no bodies, no bones, just _teeth_. Dick had been doing this for a long time now, but he still had to fight the urge to throw up at the sight.

Then something clicked, fluttered, above them, and Dick's eyes rose upwards with dawning horror to look at the bedroom ceiling. At the swarm of tiny chittering bodies that looked down at them hungrily with glittering, insectile eyes. "Tim..."

"Dick!" Tim hissed with urgency as they stepped backwards, too late to go undetected. The sound of buzzing grew louder, as thousands of wings vibrated at once. "There's too many, what do we -"

"Fire! Now!"

The swarm exploded downwards at his shout. Dick swung at the air, knocking small bodies to the side. He was killing them on impact, the iron on his escrima too much for such small fae to withstand even a single blow, but that hardly mattered with the sheer numbers they were facing. "Tim!"

"I'm trying!" He kept pushing Tim back down the hallway, hearing his brother mutter under his breath as he pulled dry tinder from his pockets to use as a base for the spell - some magic needed a base to build from and all of them carried supplies, just in case they needed them. Sharp teeth closed on Dick's neck and he ripped away the offending creature, then another, desperately trying to keep them back from his brother so Tim could unleash the spell. 

He could hear Tim's voice growing louder behind him, his confidence building with every spoken word, until his chanting finally ended on a triumphant shout of, " _Incendiere!_ " and Dick felt the fire burst into existence. Flame rushed forwards around him, successfully forcing the fae back as the tiny creatures emitted high-pitched squeals of pain. Dick pulled another fairy off his shoulder and threw it into the growing fire that spilled from Tim's hands, instantly incinerating the little beast. 

He reminded himself to thank Alfred yet again for his work on the thick leather of his coat, which had protected him from getting even more bites than the one's already bleeding down his neck and cheek.

"Dick!" Tim grabbed his elbow as the fire burned, the realisation of something Dick already knew on his pale face. "We can't get back down the stairs!"

The swarm of tooth fairies wasn't so mindless as some might have assumed; they'd driven the two hunters back with precision, obviously thinking that they would have no escape route if they kept them from the stairs. It just went to prove that these particular creatures had never have heard of Dick Grayson. "I know, baby bird, we're going to take another exit. Just make sure you keep that fire burning, we can't let any of them get out of here."

"What -" He grabbed Tim's arm to steer him towards the window at the end of the landing. "Oh Dick, no!"

The angry screeches of the fae rose in volume over the building fire. The smoke stung at Dick's eyes, making him cough as he pulled his grapple line from his belt.

"Don't worry, Tim, I've done this loads of times." Dick didn't waste time in breaking open the boards covering up the window with one of his escrima before shoving the weapon back into his thigh holster. He peered out into the night, using Tim's still helpful ball of light (Dick would never have been able to keep two spells going at once) to find a suitable anchor point. 

He fired the grapple with the ease of long practice, smirking in triumph as it caught easily on the stonework of the opposite building and wasted no time in turning to Tim, who had his hands out in front of him as he encouraged the fire to greater intensity. "Come on, now!" 

Dick held out his arm, wrapping it tightly around his brothers thin body as he catapulted them out into the night and onto the neighbouring roof. He held on until he was sure Tim had a secure grip of his own, before turning to look back at the burning house behind them. "Shit, it's not burning quick enough, they're going to get out if we don't -"

Suddenly he stumbled, the house they were standing on was shaking under their feet and he had to lunge quickly to catch Tim's arm before his brother could fall. Dick threw them down against the roof, pressing their bodies flat against the tiles as he made a grim effort to hold on.

"It's not focused on us!" Tim exclaimed, daring to point one hand at the house they'd just run from. The shaking, rumbling, _quaking_ grew worse and they watched together, wide-eyed with shock, as the infested house began to crumble, then fall apart in front of their eyes. The fire Tim had conjured roared higher as it did, quickly consuming the broken remains. 

Magic fire, it was way more efficient than your everyday flame.

"I guess they're not getting out after all." 

The shaking stopped as suddenly as it had started, and below them Dick could hear the shocked cries of people as they left their homes to look at the devastation. It wouldn't be long before the fire department got here, which left Dick torn between the need to get the hell out of dodge or stay and make sure that everything and everyone on the ground below weren't going to be in further danger if they took off.

While he thought it over Tim was focused on other things, like how the hell a building that had looked to have pretty solid foundations had suddenly caved in like that. And it had caved in, Dick realised, not fallen over into the street. All the debris was tightly contained in the house's original standing space. "It wasn't me, the fire couldn't have done that, Dick. It had to be something supernatural, another spellcaster maybe."

"You're right," Dick risked letting go of his brother now that the shaking had stopped. He could hear sirens approaching in the distance. "It wasn't natural, but who would do that?"

"Another fae? Maybe one that wanted the tooth fairies gone as well and took advantage of our attack to do it."

He shook his head, "Another fae probably wouldn't have waited for us to get out of the building first. There's something else to this." Dick noticed something else as he scanned the area for clues, a brown envelope stuck to the chimney of the house they were sitting on. 

Well, that wasn't foreboding at all.

He got up and walked easily up the slope of the roof towards it, hesitating only briefly before pulling the envelope off the brickwork. It had been stuck on with cellotape, not a very fae thing to do. "Shit..."

"What is it?" Tim was moving a lot more slowly up the roof than Dick had, almost crawling over the steep incline. "Dick?"

"It's a message, addressed to me." He heard the sharp, surprised intake of his brother's breath.

"Do you really think you should be opening that?" Dick shrugged, there was only way to find out.

The envelope tore open easily in his hands and he pulled out the folded note inside. It was ordinary lined paper, like the kind you'd be able to buy in any supermarket. There was no strange glow, or powders, or arcane symbols; nothing that would indicate a trap being laid in the words, but they were still enough to make his heart seize in his chest.

_They call him Joker now._

The penmanship was painfully familiar.

"Dick?" Tim asked, he was still sticking low to the roof and couldn't read the note from where he was crouching. "What does it say?"

Dick shook his head, swallowing hard. "We need to get back to Bruce."

 

*

 

In the shadow of the alleyway Jason watched the two figures cross from one rooftop to the next, the taller one moved with far more grace and ease as he guided the second forwards.The sight made Jason's fingers curl tighter around the remains of his cigarette before he threw it down, grinding out the flame with the heel of his boot. 

What would his family do if he wasn't watching their backs for them, he thought bitterly.

He knew he wasn't alone in the alley, hadn't been for a couple minutes, and now the excitement was over Jason turned, glaring at the shade women lurking in the shadows behind him. He made sure to put into the look just how unimpressed he was with their ninja shit. "Yeah? What do you want?"

"Our mistress wishes to speak with you." One answered him, her voice a strange hissing whisper. "It is time."

"Time?" Jason snorted, wondering what Talia could possibly want with him now. It had been a couple months since he'd last spoken to her and he'd been out of her tender loving care for far longer than that. "Time for what?" He pulled out another cigarette, but the answer made him freeze in place before he could light it.

"Time for you to repay the favour you owe her."

He licked his suddenly dry lips and slid the cigarette back in the carton, before tucking it back into the pocket of his jacket. "Well then," Jason said, with sudden seriousness. "You better lead the way."

Something told him this night had just taken a turn for the worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The concept of evil tooth fairies was somewhat shamelessly lifted from Hellboy II, I love that movie.
> 
> This fic now has a plot of sorts! The only thing I'm still debating is pairings, if there will be any and what they will be (*cough*JayDick*cough*). We'll see how things progress as I write it.

**Author's Note:**

> So... I've been trying to stick to a twice a week upload schedule, but today this story jumped up and bit me in the arse and I couldn't resist posting up the first part. I've always adored stories of faeries and changelings XD
> 
> This will probably update between instalments of Talon and the Hood as I work on them, as well as a few other pieces I have lined up to post in the near future. Tags will also be added as the story progresses (basically once I figure out where this thing is going).


End file.
